Slashdot Mirror
Cyber-Policing In India: Bye-Bye, Anonymity
The Zapper writes: "The Mumbai (Formerly Bombay) Cops now want to control the Cyber World. In what they call a 'Step to curb hacking and proliferation of Pornographic Email ' they are going to introduce I-D cards issued on basis of passports and driving licenses without which no one will be able to have internet access in Cybercafes all over Mumbai.
If this gets implemented, and it seems it will, the Mumbai netizens can kiss anonymity good bye for ever. The I.T bill recently passed by the present Government makes hacking and accessing pornographic sites a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than an year.
Here is Link to the
story on Yahoo India."
I don't think anybody's arguing whether this is an effective technological system, other than the obvious arguments (stolen cards, spoofed cards, defective cards, etc.)
The argument here is about the horrible privacy violations this opens up.
Regardless of why they are doing it, it opens up the possibility of doing very nasty things they couldn't do nearly as easily without these cards.
It seems to pretty clearly violate Article 17 of the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which India has signed and ratified and is thus subject to under international law.
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I thought this sort of thing could only happen in Saudia Arabia... or Utah.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Not widespread by any means, but definitely more than a misremembering of an NPR report.
If next time you are going to make a statement as serious as "there is female genital mutilation in india" or "there is no female genital mutilation in india" in a public forum, you would check with Google first, it would be to the betterment for us all. Just a thought.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Wow. One year for coming across a pornographic site. What if it was an accident, such as a site forwarding the browser to a prono site, an unwanted pop-up, unsolicited email?
Seems like the site moved the page. Anyways this is the link for the company who suckered India's goverment into buying highly priced honeypots.
http://www.peakxv.net/InterOp/interop.html
The more uninformed goverments are, the more likely cruddy laws will be passed that hinders tech sectors such as those in the industry on a security related basis. Well thankfully I don't have these laws in the US oh so great land of the free && *snicker*
Want Root?
Recently the Indian government was suckered into buying honeypots and in January for those who don't recall they hired a dozen script kiddies to handle security (I couldn't find the link sorry), so what I see happening is, goverments are getting scared by technology, and instead of coming up with logical solutions, they feel harsh punishments will deter someone's future actions.
Instead of creating such broad laws which can also hurt innocent people somewhere down the line, hardcore studies should be done before such broad laws are created, and every 5 or so years another study should be done to ensure the laws are working to the benefit of the people as opposed to throwing something out because of fears, or because its almost election time $WHEREVER.
Sadly it looks like we are going to have a complete world full of drones who'll either be afraid to interact, or a world full of what the government will view as anarchists if things continue with these trends.
Want Root?
Or, more specifically, how is the indian government issuing ID cards to track what you're doing in a cybercafe (notice they're talking public access points here, nobody said anything about them issuing ID cards for using the internet in your own home), different than say a certain well known government censoring what sites you're allowed to visit at your local library public library?
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Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
That is the sound of f Indian geeks leaving the country en masse for greener and more liberal countries.
And is it just me thinking that there is a certain sense of irony in prohibiting pornography in one of the most population-dense countries in the world? Methinks they have this male-female sexual congress thing down pat.
Please excuse my ignorance and stereotypes, but as far as I know, India tends to look the other way when it comes to the sex trade, especially in Mumbai. I have read that the city has hundreds of brothels.
I think that really the government is only doing this for two reasons:
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Think about this:
If you could walk around in the world anonymously. No one would know who you were and couldn't trace you. How much would crime increase?
I use this as a strong point. Of course, things as bad as rape and murder (and tax evaison!) wouldn't happen over the net, but when people are forced to tell who they are, even if no one would know who they were, they tend to be cautious and safer. It isn't big-brotherism, because they aren't watching you every second, they are just forcing you to show your face when you do something naughty.
Imagine having the name of someone who just sent you that pron spam, or the name of the 43 year old man that is chatting with your 14 year old daughter.... it isn't all that bad, is it??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
First question... are there only cyber-cafes there?
I have relatives in Mumbai. Though it's been a while since I visited, the first thing to note is that most (or at least many) people don't have telephones in their home. It's much more common for 1 person in a building to have a phone, and for everyone else to borrow it. Thus, for people who have computers, dial-up isn't common, and broadband quite rare.
This is particularly true in College Hostels. Unlike dorms here (or at least where I went to school) there aren't phones in every room. Plus, if your family has a computer, it's probably for the entire family -- not just you. Cybercafes are a much more major source of internet access.
An illustrative example. I have about 7-8 email addresses that I use, plus another 5-6 that simply forward, plus two domains in which I can create an infinite number of addresses. This is just me. My mom (who lives here) has 4 email addresses, my brother has several and even my technophobe father have his own. My grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins in India all share 1 hotmail account. (And they actually have "home" access through my uncle's office.)
Summary: There aren't only cybercafe's in Mumbai, but there are a lot more people who have no other alternative.
I can spell. I just can't type.
Where then do they get the models for this site?
I see a lot of Yanks talking as if it couldn't happen in the U.S.
I did some consulting for a U.S. government agency a few years back. Their network was using DHCP but the higher-ups were quite upset because they couldn't associate user with IP address. They spent millions ripping out their old network operating system and implementing another just to get this capability.
The government of the U.S. hates anonymity. They would like to be able to track absolutely everything and as soon as they can see a way to do it without getting too much noise from their citizens that's precisely what will happen.
Don't chortle too much about India.